Home > Fox's Kendall uncritically reported Rep. Norwood's false claim that under the Senate immigration bill, "[a]ll you got to do is come across the border [and] you can become a citizen"

Fox's Kendall uncritically reported Rep. Norwood's false claim that under the Senate immigration bill, "[a]ll you got to do is come across the border [and] you can become a citizen"

Fox News reporter Megyn Kendall uncritically reported Rep. Charles Norwood's (R-GA) false claim that under the Senate immigration bill, "[a]ll you got to do is come across the border [and] you can become a citizen." In fact, the bill would grant a path to citizenship only to illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than five years and who hold jobs, pass criminal background checks, learn English, and pay fines and back taxes.

On the August 15 edition of Fox News' Special Report, general assignment reporter Megyn Kendall[1], in a report about new immigration population statistics[2] released by the U.S. Census Bureau, uncritically reported Rep. Charles Norwood's (R-GA) false claim that under the Senate immigration bill[3], "[a]ll you got to do is come across the border [and] you can become a citizen." In fact, as Media Matters for America has documented[4], the Senate bill would grant a path to citizenship only to illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than five years, and those immigrants would be eligible only if they "hold jobs, pass criminal background checks, learn English, and pay fines and back taxes," as The New York Times has reported[5]. Illegal immigrants who have been in the United States two to five years would be required to return to a port of entry, where they would be granted temporary worker visas and could become eligible for eventual citizenship; illegal immigrants who have been in the United States less than two years -- and all future illegal entrants -- would, if captured, be deported under the Senate bill's regulations.

From the August 15 edition of Fox News' Special Report:

KENDALL: The data does not specify how many of these immigrants are in the country illegally, but experts say the number's high.

WILLIAM FREY (Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution): Immigration is on the rise and illegal immigration is on the rise. It used to be maybe only a third or a quarter of all the immigrants each year were illegal. Now it's about half.

KENDALL: That could fuel the immigration debate, which continued this week in Georgia, where GOP Congressman Charlie Norwood argued against the more forgiving Senate reform bill and in favor of the much tougher House version.

NORWOOD: All you got to do is come across the border under the Senate bill, you can become a citizen, you can bring all of your family. We're going to pick up about 20 million new immigrants in the next 20 years, and Georgia is running out of water now.

KENDALL: The dueling House and Senate bills have been languishing here on Capitol Hill for months. The conventional wisdom now, at this point, Jim, is that there is virtually no chance of lawmakers reaching a compromise any time before the mid-term elections.